Charles’ 
Slide of the Week: February 17th, 2005
Tasteful Interior Decor, Hagerstown, Maryland, 1957
A granny square afghan over the back of an avocado green easy chair; matching curtains; checkerboard wood paneling and in case you didn’t notice, ten reindeer, two foxes sitting on a bearskin rug; one fox hanging from the curtains; a beaver in one window and an owl flying out the other. Have a coat or jacket to hang up? No problem - there are six deer hoof coat hooks! Need some light? Then turn on the reindeer hoof lamp.
Clearly the male ego works in strange ways. It’s one thing to go hunting, but it’s another to have stereo vision of your kill when you sit in your easy chair.
Great interior designers always say accessorize with nature. In this case the interior decorator has taken the theme to the extreme. Dead animal fur goes so well with blond wood and avocado green - very earthy
Have you ever seen a trophy room like this? How often do you go over to someone’s house and witness such a spectacular display? I certainly never have. But my taxidermy curiosity has been peaked! If yours has too, make sure to visit the most shocking taxidermy showroom display in all of Southern California, Bob’s Taxidermy, 1912 West Commonwealth in Fullerton. It has just skyrocketed to the top of my must-visit-soon list. See you there!
Here’s to taxidermy and you
Charles Phoenix
Los Angeles
February 2005
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3 Comments on “Tasteful Interior Decor, Hagerstown, Maryland, 1957”
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May 12th, 2006 at 3:07 pm
I’m commenting on this bizarre and rather frightening picture mostly because I was born in Hagerstown MD in 1944 and “growed up” in Martinsburg WV, just 18 miles away. I always felt a stranger in a strange land in that part of the world. Seeing this picture gives me further proof that I had reason to feel strange. I went away to prep school in 1958. That was the beginning of my freedom. Glad to be in the Boston area!
July 16th, 2006 at 9:05 pm
Boy, this picture brings back a scary childhood memory! A friend of my father’s had a den that looked similar to this in the late 1960s/early 1970s. It wasn’t quite as “tack-o-rama” as this, but pretty darn close — only there were more mounted large fish and birds on the walls, as opposed to quite so many mounted deer heads. When my parents dragged me along to visit this couple, I was always relegated to the “Den of Death,” as I thought of it, while my parents visited with their friends in the even tackier Chinese-themed tchotchke living room. In those days, when your parents told you to “stay there and behave,” you did. It seemed like I had to sit in the Den of Death for hours, totally freaked out by the stuffed animals on the wall, and I think it was there at the tender age of 6 or 7 that the seeds of animal rights/animal activism, and “Don’t eat Bambi” were planted in my little brain.
August 29th, 2007 at 7:19 am
Reindeer don’t live in America, that I know of. Those are just regular deer, whitetail or something. I don’t think they are reindeer though.